The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

You know that one time you were like, “Hey, who needs this personal email I use on a daily basis, when I have Facebook email! Time to tell everyone they should contact me at my @facebook.com email address, and only there!”? No? That’s probably because recently, Facebook went ahead and quietly switched users’ primary email address to its in-house email address without bothering to really tell anyone about it.

The jig was up on Saturday, and by Monday the Internets were abuzz with the switch that occurred without notice on all Facebook profiles. Would you rather have someone contact you at totallyfakemadeupemail7 at yourpreferenceofdomainzzz dot com, or have all your emails sent to your Facebook message inbox? Yeah, we thought as much.

It would appear that users were not asked explicit permission for the switch, which often resulted in other email addresses being hidden on Timelines.

According to the Chicago Tribune, a blogger figured out the change on Saturday, writing:

“Facebook silently inserted themselves into the path of formerly-direct unencrypted communications from people who want to email me. In other contexts, this is known as a Man In The Middle (MITM) attack. What on earth do they think they are playing at?”

Facebook reportedly says it told everyone all about this fun change back in April when it sent a note all about how users would be getting new URL and email addresses. Nothing was said about changing which emails users had listed.

“In addition to everyone receiving an address, we’re also rolling out a new setting that gives people the choice to decide which addresses they want to show on their timelines,” a spokesman for the company said. “Ever since the launch of timeline, people have had the ability to control what posts they want to show or hide on their own timelines, and today we’re extending that to other information they post, starting with the Facebook address.”

Here’s how you change up your email address settings: Go to your Timeline and click on “About.” Scroll down in “Contact Information” and hit “Edit.” Use the “X” out button to hide the @facebook.com email and show your preferred email address. Or if you don’t have Timeline yet (bless your heart, I’m jealous): Go to your profile, click “Update info,” scroll down to “Contact Info” and click “Edit.” Customize your setting depending on each individual email address.